Over the last decade or so, various self-righteously zealous COG splinter cults have made a requirement of their few followers that they read and hear the entire book of the law during the Feast. Now that James Malm's demands have ended up in the grave it is time for the self-appointed and illegitimately ordained Bob Thiel to demand that his followers read the entire Book of Deuteronomy during his sad Feast. Instead of looking forward to the reign of Christ in the world to come and a time of joy, Thiel and certain splinter cults of the church look backwards at the law that was never meant to be a standard for Christians. The laws were a set of rules specific to the Jewish people to set them apart from those around them. It was for them only, not for any other tribe or group of people anywhere on the face of the earth.
The Feast of Tabernacles for 2020 is almost upon us. Services are to begin the evening of October 2nd and continue until the Last Great Day which is October 10th. It is a time we can meet as brethren each Fall as well as learn and exhort one another.
Notice also the following:
10 …”At the end of every seven years, at the appointed time in the year of release, at the Feast of Tabernacles, 11 when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God in the place which He chooses, you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing. 12 Gather the people together, men and women and little ones, and the stranger who is within your gates, that they may hear and that they may learn to fear the Lord your God and carefully observe all the words of this law, 13 and that their children, who have not known it, may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God as long as you live in the land which you cross the Jordan to possess.” (Deuteronomy 31:10-13).
Notice that this reading of the book of the law was to happen every seven years. Although this has been overlooked by most COG groups, in the CCOG we did this in 2013, and thus are intending to do it seven years later, which is this year, in 2020. ...
Different Sites, Different Recommendations
While ALL CCOG sites need to cover the Book of the Law in 2020, there are different ways this is expected to be done.
Sites with live sermon speaker (USA, Serbia, Africa, and India) are to have sermons that will, by the end of the Feast of Tabernacles, have covered the entire Book of Deuteronomy.
Those sites that do not have sufficient internet connections (such as the Philippines and parts of Africa) should watch the sermon DVDs that were sent a couple of weeks ago. In some cases, those sermons should be translated live into local languages. If the DVDs do not arrive (and they had not arrived in Ethiopia when I last heard), please at least have someone read the entire Book of Deuteronomy in the local language during the Feast of Tabernacles.
Various zealots in COG leadership have turned a once joyous time of the year into a time of drudgery. Is it any wonder why they cannot keep members?
19 comments:
Doesn't the word "religion" in hebrew and arab (deen) mean "Law?"
Nck
Remember, you can't be a grump at the Feadmst of Tabernacles, so smile, and no gritting of your teeth during the sermons or the reading of the law!
well, if we knew where we were in the 7yr cycle he'd have a point....
that being said, it certainly doesn't hurt to teach the law to everyone.
Jesus will re-establish the 7yr cycle when He returns, then everyone will be on the same page.
Just like some churches promote "read the Bible in a year", synagogues have been using the weekly "Torah portion" for centuries. At the end of the FOT, it's back to Genesis - no lengthy misinterpretations of Devarim taking up time that could be used sitting in a Sukka eating kreplach!
The bible is an odd book in many ways. If you look at the concept of the law vs. grace in particular there is what seems to be contradiction between the old and the new testaments on that matter but also there are even contradictions in the new testament on the matter of law vs. grace. The question, are we saved by the law or by grace?, is not clearly answered in the bible. Denis D. I think has commented on this in the past but if look at the bible as a book writen by many different people with different ideas and biases that they have injected in all of these writings you will start to understand why the bible speaks with a forked tongue. The law of Dueteronomy seems to have been writen by men with clearly a legalistic bias while other parts of the bible are clearly writen by men with a salvation by grace bias.
“Various zealots in COG leadership have turned a once joyous time of the year into a time of drudgery. Is it any wonder why they cannot keep members?”
The reason they cannot keep members is because they follow HWA’s OCD traditions as if they’re the commandments of God. Congregations should observe the annual feasts in their local congregations (like Catholics/Protestants/Jews keep all their annual holidays) and let members choose when they want to go on holiday and visit while on holiday other congregations if they so choose rather than force them to save up a tithe of their income to take 8 days off to go on “holiday” in the fall to a COG-authorized holiday site. I don’t see any of this taught or kept in the Bible neither OT or NT. It’s an invention of HWA. And those who teach such and follow such ought to be ashamed of themselves and repent.
Without counsel of more mature Christians, Bob has started down the same slippery slope that has pulled many Christians out of the faith. He cites a verse in Deuteronomy as "proof" that his cult has to read Deuteronomy every seven years. If Bob can't see that this is circular reasoning, he's hopeless. Christians understand that since Jesus Christ modified our relationship with Deuteronomy, we should look first to Him.
Now that Bob will be reading Deuteronomy to his flock, how long will it be until someone complains that the Continuing Church of God is improperly neglecting Deuteronomy 22:12, by failing to wear tassels on the corners of their clothes? And that's just a small one. Reading Deuteronomy will highlight just how far distant the improperly named Continuing Church of God is from God's instructions in that book. This won't be a problem for Bob's African congregations, who are already practiced at putting on a show for the Bwanas who come to give them money, chickens, and laptop computers, and then put on a different show the following Sunday for the next group. For Bob's followers in the Western nations, however, he has started a practice that inevitably leads either to Messianic Judaism or to utter chaos. Pretty soon, to keep up this direction, Bob is going to need to explain to his followers just how badly wrong HWA was about some fundamental points, which will end up costing him much of his older Western following. Maybe he can recruit a new Messianic Jewish congregation from buyers of his supplements, but his days as an "Armstrongist" are now numbered.
This is about bondage. As Paul states in Galatians:
"Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar.
"For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.
"But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all."
It is quite apparent that these people are not the children of "Jerusalem which is above" like New Covenant Christians. And from an article by Malcolm Gladwell ("How Not to Negotiate with Believers," New Yorker magazine, 2014):
"Not long after the Waco siege began, James Tabor, the Biblical scholar, heard David Koresh on CNN talking about the Seven Seals. Tabor is an expert on Biblical apocalypticism and recognized the Branch Davidians for what they were - a community immersed in the world of the Old Testament prophets."
This insight holds for all the little Apocalyptic Millerite groups - they live under bondage in the surreal and anachronistic world of the Old Testament. It is like people who form societies and pretend to live on Tolkien's Middle Earth - but these literati do that for fun; the Apocalyptic Millerites are grimly serious.
But there is a limit to this dalliance with bondage and fantasy for the Apocalyptic Millerites, they will not stay in brush arbors during the FOT like they are supposed to. In fact, they will apparently read about this in Deuteronomy 16 somewhere in the course of the FOT. Upon reading, they should all reflect on the fact that they are in disobedience to the full scope of the FOT observance. But no splinter group is going to give up the Sheraton or Doubletree for the precise Biblical injunction. Zeal has its limits.
Remember, you can't be a grump at the FOT? Smile!
Maybe it's just me but may I suggest Dr Bob require the reading of the New Testament instead?
I remember the days when my mother used to make me keep the Feast Days. She joined the WCG with her family and friends back in 1979. Went to their services from the early to mid 80s. By 1986, they were all kicked out when my uncle, the one who introduced everyone to Armstrongism questioned the beliefs of the WCG. Particularly certain things like not allowing its members (especially women) to wear make up. Years later, my mother raised me and my older sister and some of our cousins in the beliefs of the Worldwide Church of God. With her, it was as if she had never left the church. It was such a burden keeping all the teachings of WCG. I felt different because I couldn't celebrate the holidays like most of my classmates at school. If anyone's interested, I recently wrote an article about my childhood experience. https://vocal.media/futurism/being-raised-with-cultish-beliefs-2n1ujo0aus
Hi Jessica
If you want to send it to me or send a link I will post it here if you want...
No2hwa@yahoo.com
Anon 633 wrote by failing to wear tassels on the corners of their clothes
For things Bob doesn't want to do, he comes up with some rather flimsy excuses. I remember Bob's reason for not wearing tzitzit was Paul being mistaken for an Egyptian (Acts 21:38). Bob argued that it would be obvious that Paul was a Jew if he had been wearing tzitzit; since someone mistook him for an Egyptian, he didn't "look Jewish" because he wasn't wearing them! So, Bob went on, if Paul didn't look like a Jew, hence he wasn't wearing tzitzit, therefore that command must no longer be required, QED. Oy veh, what a putz!
Hoss, Bob seems to be unaware that in Jesus' day the world's largest Jewish city was Alexandria, in Egypt! Literally millions of Jews were Egyptian in Paul's day. And let's not forget one very prominent individual in the Bible who was both Egyptian and Jew: Moses.
Also, if our exegetical technique is to find examples of people not keeping a law and then to use this as proof that it isn't a law, then there are plenty of examples of murder in Scripture, so by Bob's logic we don't need to keep the "do not murder" command. Or would Bob say that Peter's denial of Christ means that lying is OK under the New Covenant? Even if Paul was violating the law, this doesn't give us permission to do so. If we adopt that standard, all sorts of prohibited conduct becomes allowable in Bwana Bob's Even Newer Covenant.
Is Dr. Thiel requiring people to keep the entire O.T. law at all Feast sites?
For instance, did everyone have to go out and collect palm fronds and "willows of the brook" on Day 1 (Lev. 23:40)?
If not, why not?
Anon 207 - Exactly! In many areas Bob seems to skim the surface and just assume he's got the big picture. But, as one director at Spokesman's Club would frequently demand, More depth!
Anon 726 - In one sermon, Bob wriggles out of collecting vegetation by noting something like, you can't fin palm leaves in, uh, France. Again, you can't find exactly what you need everywhere in the world, so just book in at a Super 8 instead.
Since the destruction of the Temple, and the diaspora, Jews knew they couldn't keep Feasts exactly as commanded, so they've done the best they could to come close.
Bob wriggles out of collecting vegetation by noting something like, you can't find palm leaves in, uh, France.
Or maybe this means that this festival was meant ONLY for ancient Israel, and isn't meant for a faith spread around the world?
I wonder what the reaction will be when they read that anyone who touches an unclean animal is unclean or if an unclean animal touch any furniture or cookware it is to be thrown out. How many COG members has dogs, cats, mice or birds.
I bet a dollar to a donut they blow right by those verses.
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